Tag Archives: soup

This is great for a rainy cold weekend lunch. Guess what we are having today? It’s great over a bowl of rice, too. (SOME!!!)people at my house insist on meat in their diets… I could care less and don’t really eat meat. So this is good either way. Sometimes I just get out two giant pots on the stove and make both versions at the same time.

Freezes great.

Veggie Veggie Soup

1 lb chicken thighs – cut into bite sized pieces (optional)

1 chopped onion

1 box of Pacific chicken stock

3 peeled and chopped carrots

2 peeled and chopped potatoes

1 C frozen chopped spinach

1 1/2 C frozen chopped broccoli

1 can cut green beans

1 peeled and chopped zucchini salt and pepper to taste

1 tsp poultry seasoning

1 T oregano

1 T Italian seasoning

Cover chicken bits with a little water- 2 cups?maybe. simmer until cooked through. Add all the veggies and chicken stock. Add seasonings. Simmer an hour, or until the carrots are cookedto your liking.

Begin adding chicken broth, coconut milk and the saved cooking water a cup at a time, until you get the consistancy you want. I was looking for a really thin gravy.

Add salt, white pepper and poultry seasoning to taste. I probably added at least 1 tsp of salt, 1/4 tsp of pepper and 1/4 tsp of poultry seasoning to mine.

I also warmed a 1/4 C of broth with a vegan broth cube and threw that in for some depth of flavor.

The secret: at this point, I added 1/2 of the cooked and drained potato cubes to the gravy and I used the hand blender to make it smoooooooooth. All the onion pieces disappeared, and the soup was perfect.

The perfect soup: Add the rest of the cooked potato chunks into the smooth “gravy” soup and add more chicken broth as needed to really make it the soupy consistancy that you want. I like thick soup with a few chunks of potato in it.Your mileage may vary.

Some options:

Once I took out my portions of “potato soup”, I added

1 cup of cooked and chopped broccoli

1 cup of cooked and chopped chicken meat

to the potato soup to make it more hearty for those that want that kind of soup.

Not only are the clouds blanketing the whole neighborhood as “thick as pea soup” … I made some too, with the leftover ham from Christmas dinner.

There is no recipe- other than throw it in there and wait an hour. The general idea is to brown a chopped onion in a tablespoon of oil, with 3 cloves of chopped garlic. Then chop up some ham and throw that on in there too to warm up and stew around and get all steamy with the onions. Then I added 4 cups of dried split green peas, covered them with water and tossed in about a cup of chicken broth that was left in the fridge. I know.. I know.. measurements! please!. Sorry. not this recipe. It just seems to figure itself out. I also cubed a large potato and tossed it in. I grated a large carrot into the soup for color – and it cooked so much it disappeared. Great if you are trying to hide carrots in their food I guess. Not so great, if you are going for some color contrast. Oh well. It’s thick and soupy. And it goes really well with the “wonder bread” shaped and baked like biscuits.

It’s snowing. I am cold – even with the thermostat up, so I made a vat of chili. Yes, a vat. The reason I cook gallons of soup/chili/spaghetti sauce at a time is because we go through it so fast that it actually is less work to spend all of a Sunday afternoon concocting the mess and freezing it in containers to use later, than to make the recipe 8 times. Less waste of my time, less continuous cleanup, more instant dinners in the weeks ahead. It’s all good.

Chili for chilly weather .Ha.

1 large can crushed tomatoes

1 large can diced tomatoes

1 -16 oz can garbanzo beans -blenderized into paste

1 can pinto beans

2 cans dark red kidney beans

3 C cooked lentils

1 lb. ground pork – browned

1 onion – cooked in with the pork

1 tsp salt

1 tsp white pepper

1 tsp cumin

Chili powder – to taste – I used about 1/2 the container this time until it tasted right… I must have bought the wrong kind at the store.

water as needed to make it the consistancy that you prefer.

Blenderize the garbanzo beans into a paste and put it into the vat. (This helps to thicken the chili, as well as hide the fact that I am making them eat — cue the dramatic music here — garbanzo beans…oh, the horror.) Drain the cans of beans. Dump them all into the soup kettle. Add the tomatoes too.

Brown the meat and onions. Add that to the kettle. Add spices. Cover and let simmer for at least two hours. Stir the chili every 20 minutes or so to keep it from sticking. This version simmered for about 5 hours. It’s perfect.

Other things that I have been able to blenderize and add to the chili in the past: Green beans, broccoli, carrots, butternutsquash…. just think of all the veggies that they won’t even know they are enjoying… LOL.

Yes. It’s raining. The daylight sky is pretty dark and the school luch menu actually says “chili” today. Woohoo! Planning, it’s all in the planning. Fall weather always seems to need “soup” or chili of some kind.

Here’s what we came up with for lunch today.

First I cooked the lentils.

1 1/2 c dry lentils, cooked in 4 cups of water until soft.

Then I cooked 1 lb. of ground meat (turkey, pork, whatever)

and added in:

one large white onion, diced

1 large can diced tomatoes

1 large can crushed tomatoes

1 can red kidney beans

1 can pinto beans

3 tablespoons of chili powder

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp white pepper

Then I added about 1/2 of the cooked lentils and pureed the rest with 2 small jars of butternut squash baby food with 1 can of garbanzo beans, and a small amount of water, probably a half of a cup.

The puree went in the pot with the rest of the tomatoes and beans. I did add some additional water of an unknown amount to make it the right consistancy. YMMV.